Few Women on Boards: What’s Identity Got to Do With It?

Lívia Markoczy (), Sunny Li Sun () and Jigao Zhu ()
Additional contact information
Lívia Markoczy: University of Texas at Dallas
Sunny Li Sun: University of Massachusetts Lowell
Jigao Zhu: University of International Business and Economics

Journal of Business Ethics, 2020, vol. 165, issue 2, No 9, 327 pages

Abstract: Abstract Drawing on the similarity-attraction perspective and social identity theory, we argue that male versus female interlocking directors are likely to have different experiences when they work alongside female board directors of other firms. The theorized source of such experiences for male interlocking directors is in-group favoritism and/or a social identity threat-related discomfort. Interlocking female directors are theorized to be ambivalent between desiring social support versus experiencing identity threat-based career concerns. These experiences are predicted to motivate male versus female interlocking directors in different ways to reduce or, conversely, to potentially facilitate female representation on focal boards. We additionally predict that economic crisis reduces the biases of male directors against appointing female directors to boards. We test our hypotheses based on a novel data set that includes 25,460 directors in Chinese A-share public companies with a sample of 27,058 firm-quarter observations for 1635 firms between 2006 and 2010 and find most of our hypotheses supported.

Keywords: Women on boards; Board interlock ties; Social identity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10551-019-04104-z Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:jbuset:v:165:y:2020:i:2:d:10.1007_s10551-019-04104-z

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... cs/journal/10551/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10551-019-04104-z

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Business Ethics is currently edited by Michelle Greenwood and R. Edward Freeman

More articles in Journal of Business Ethics from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().